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That's something I'm wondering for some time now, I haven't been able to find a short but clear explanation for this one:

Why is it that SQL Server needs its data- and logfiles residing on a NTFS partition? Wouldn't it be wise to allowing it additionally to the traditional way to create the datafiles straight onto the raw disk? For instance the datafile onto a big RAID5 array
and the logfile on another smaller RAID1? Removing NTFS would lower the overhead and maybe lead to a bit more performance. At least logic would tell me that.

This would also affect WinFS, since it's SQL Server based. Why not allocating e.g. 256megs (or some percentage) of a raw partition as logfile and the rest all for data? OK, there's the new thing with the filestreams now (NTFS needed atm), but that could be
solved by merging filesystem semantics into WinFS/SQLServer, by means of an internal bitmap that tells the FS driver whether it's a datapage or a file system cluster.